Portal:Rock music

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The Rock Music Portal

Rock is a broad genre of popular music that originated as "rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles from the mid-1960s, particularly in the United States and the United Kingdom. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a ⁴
₄ time signature using a verse–chorus form, but the genre has become extremely diverse. Like pop music, lyrics often stress romantic love but also address a wide variety of other themes that are frequently social or political. Rock was the most popular genre of music in the U.S. and much of the Western world from the 1950s to the 2010s.

Rock musicians in the mid-1960s began to advance the album ahead of the single as the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption, with the Beatles at the forefront of this development. Their contributions lent the genre a cultural legitimacy in the mainstream and initiated a rock-informed album era in the music industry for the next several decades. By the late 1960s "classic rock" period, a number of distinct rock music subgenres had emerged, including hybrids like blues rock, folk rock, country rock, southern rock, raga rock, and jazz rock, which contributed to the development of psychedelic rock, influenced by the countercultural psychedelic and hippie scene. New genres that emerged included progressive rock, which extended artistic elements, and glam rock, which highlighted showmanship and visual style. In the second half of the 1970s, punk rock reacted by producing stripped-down, energetic social and political critiques. Punk was an influence in the 1980s on new wave, post-punk and eventually alternative rock.

From the 1990s, alternative rock began to dominate rock music and break into the mainstream in the form of grunge, Britpop, and indie rock. Further fusion subgenres have since emerged, including pop-punk, electronic rock, rap rock, and rap metal. Some movements were conscious attempts to revisit rock's history, including the garage rock/post-punk revival in the 2000s. Since the 2010s, rock has lost its position as the pre-eminent popular music genre in world culture, but remains commercially successful. The increased influence of hip-hop and electronic dance music can be seen in rock music, notably in the techno-pop scene of the early 2010s and the pop-punk-hip-hop revival of the 2020s. (Full article...)

General images - load new batch

The following are images from various rock music-related articles on Wikipedia.

Image 1Tommy Steele, one of the first British rock and rollers, performing in Stockholm in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 2Wolfmother, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 3Led Zeppelin live at Chicago Stadium, January 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 4Big Joe Turner and Pete Johnson's record "Roll 'Em Pete" is regarded as a precursor to rock and roll. (from Rock and roll)
Image 5Buddy Holly and his band, the Crickets (from Rock and roll)
Image 6Poison, seen here in 2008, were among the most successful acts of the 1980s glam metal era. (from Hard rock)
Image 7Foo Fighters performing an acoustic show in 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 8Chuck Berry in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 9Rush on stage in Milan, Italy, 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 10Sign commemorating the role of Alan Freed and Cleveland, Ohio, in the origins of rock and roll (from Rock and roll)
Image 11Little Richard in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 12Original member Izzy Stradlin' on stage with Guns N' Roses in 2006 (from Hard rock)
Image 13The Who on stage in 1975 (from Hard rock)
Image 14Golden Earring receives a gold record in 1970. (from Hard rock)
Image 15Drum notation for a backbeat (from Hard rock)
Image 16Elvis Presley in a promotion shot for Jailhouse Rock in 1957 (from Rock and roll)
Image 17Nirvana were at the forefront of the 1990s grunge era. (from Hard rock)
Image 18Aerosmith performing at Quilmes Rock in Buenos Aires, Argentina on April 15, 2007 (from Hard rock)
Image 19Kiss onstage in Boston in 2004 (from Hard rock)
Image 20Bill Haley and his Comets performing in the 1954 Universal International film Round Up of Rhythm (from Rock and roll)
Image 21Baker, Bruce and Clapton of Cream, whose blues rock improvisation was a major factor in the development of the genre (from Hard rock)
Image 22"There's No Romance in Rock and Roll" made the cover of True Life Romance in 1956. (from Rock and roll)

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Red Rocks Amphitheatre, the site of the concert, pictured in 2006.

U2 Live at Red Rocks: Under a Blood Red Sky is a concert film by Irish rock band U2. It was recorded on 5 June 1983 at Red Rocks Amphitheatre in Colorado, United States, on the group's War Tour. Originally released in 1984 on videocassette, U2 Live at Red Rocks was the band's first video release. It accompanied a 1983 live album entitled Under a Blood Red Sky, on which two tracks from the film appear. The video was directed by Gavin Taylor and produced by Rick Wurpel and Doug Stewart.

The film was arranged by U2 management to showcase the band's live act and to promote them to American audiences. It depicts the band's performance at Red Rocks on a rain-soaked evening. The concert was almost cancelled because of the inclement weather, but the band had invested in the filming with Island Records and concert promoter Barry Fey and wished to proceed with the gig. The rain and the torch-lit atmosphere of the surroundings made U2's performance dramatic. Segments of U2 Live at Red Rocks were shown in regular rotation on MTV, and were also broadcast on other television networks.

Critics praised the concert and the video, and it subsequently became a best-seller. The video, along with Under a Blood Red Sky, helped establish U2's reputation as remarkable live performers and boosted Red Rocks' stature as a live venue. A remastered edition of U2 Live at Red Rocks was released on DVD in September 2008 with previously unreleased tracks, coinciding with a remastered edition of Under a Blood Red Sky. Rolling Stone selected the film's performance of "Sunday Bloody Sunday" as one of the "50 Moments that Changed the History of Rock and Roll". (Full article...)

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Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, and author whose 1975 debut album Horses made her an influential member of the New York City-based punk rock movement. Smith has fused rock and poetry in her work. In 1978, her most widely known song, "Because the Night", co-written with Bruce Springsteen, reached 13th on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and fifth on the UK Singles Chart.

In 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In November 2010, Smith won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids, written to fulfill a promise she made to Robert Mapplethorpe, her longtime partner. She is ranked 47th on Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, published in 2010, and was awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2011. (Full article...)

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Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell is the sixth studio album by American rock singer Meat Loaf and the second one in the Bat Out of Hell trilogy, which was written and produced by Jim Steinman. It was released on September 14, 1993, sixteen years after Meat Loaf's first solo album Bat Out of Hell. The album reached number 1 in the United States, United Kingdom and Canada. Five tracks were released as singles, including "I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)", which reached number 1 in 28 countries.

The album was released by Virgin Records outside of North America, where it was released by MCA. The third part of the Bat trilogy, Bat Out of Hell III: The Monster Is Loose, was released in 2006.

Like the first album of the trilogy, Bat Out of Hell II was a commercial success. It sold over 14 million copies worldwide. (Full article...)

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"Enter Sandman" is a song by American heavy metal band Metallica. It is the opening track and lead single from their self-titled fifth album, released in 1991. The music was written by Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich. Vocalist and guitarist Hetfield wrote the lyrics, which deal with the concept of a child's nightmares.

The single reached number 16 on the US Billboard Hot 100 and achieved platinum certification for more than 1,000,000 copies shipped in the United States, spurring sales of over 30 million copies for Metallica and propelling Metallica to worldwide popularity. Acclaimed by critics, the song is featured in all of Metallica's live albums and DVDs released after 1991 and has been played live at award ceremonies and benefit concerts. (Full article...)

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Credit: Rama

Juliette Lewis of Juliette and the Licks at the Eurockéennes of 2007.

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Did you know (auto-generated)

... that the Liverpool Echo described British rock and roll star Tommy Steele as "quite unable to sing and play the guitar at the same time" when reviewing his first album?
... that Shin Hae-chul, who previously made hard rock and heavy metal albums, was inspired by big band music when he made The Songs for the One?
... that when rock musician Warren Zevon received a terminal diagnosis of lung cancer, he learned to "enjoy every sandwich"?
... that the British rock musician Hannah Grae went viral online with an anti-sexual harassment parody of Aqua's "Barbie Girl"?
... that the Diaspora Yeshiva Band infused rock and bluegrass with Jewish lyrics, creating a music style it called "Hasidic rock" or "Country and Eastern"?
... that during his tenure as Governor of Central Java, Muhammad Ismail banned rock music concerts and car rallies?

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The new wave of British heavy metal (commonly abbreviated as NWOBHM) was a nationwide musical movement that started in England in the mid-1970s and achieved international attention by the early 1980s. Editor Alan Lewis coined the term for an article by Geoff Barton in a May 1979 issue of the British music newspaper Sounds to describe the emergence of new heavy metal bands in the mid to late 1970s, during the period of punk rock's decline and the dominance of new wave music. (Full article...)